Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-06-Speech-2-065"
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"en.20050906.8.2-065"2
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".
Mr President, having lived most of my life under Communist rule, the rules we are enforcing in the ‘Television without Frontiers’ Directive sound all too familiar to me. Back in Communist times, a Soviet directive along the same lines was in force in the Czech Republic, aimed at drastically reducing the number of American films in favour of European productions, except that back then it applied to French and Soviet films respectively.
According to paragraph 14 of the Weber report, Parliament should endeavour to ensure that the content of television programmes is uniquely European. This begs the question of who should decide what ‘European’ means in this context. I can assure you that if there is such a thing as a universal European, then there is a simple solution to any concerns he may have in this regard. By using his channel selector, together with a small satellite dish and a receiver costing EUR 130, he can watch 1 400 television channels. It would be nigh on impossible to regulate his viewing habits.
We will not succeed in creating a European television oeuvre by means of the Directive. The only cultures that exist are national ones, and it will always be the latter that fill European quotas. For that matter, the most European programme of all is the American film
since every viewer from Finland to Portugal can understand it in its entirety. Hollywood productions are surprisingly European in their universal appeal, and our persistent attempts to keep American culture out of the mainstream of European civilisation and values are laughable. I look forward to the time after Turkey’s accession when we will use quotas to deny Europeans easily-understood American films of this kind, and be obliged to broadcast Turkish films in their place as part of a single European culture.
This amounts to nothing other than the customary social engineering, based on the belief that bans, quotas, regulations and subsidies can be used to create cultural values. This belief is entirely misguided, as the only thing that we will create is mollycoddled film directors safe in the knowledge that they can make absurd films that only a select group of relatives, mistresses and friends will see fit to applaud. By implementing the Directive, we are providing livelihoods to vast supervisory bodies in the EU Member States and granting subsidies to talentless creators who would otherwise be left behind in the usual competition for viewers. We are also perpetuating an ineffective public television system and funding European television stations that attract such a small number of viewers that it is a waste of electricity to run their transmitters. Real culture does not depend on regulations or on an endless stream of subsidies. It survives at national level, even without artificial precautions on the part of the EU. We should abolish the Directive, and leave cultural values in their rightful place, namely in the nation states."@en1
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"Pretty Woman"1
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